Earth Dating Is Easy
by SelDear
Summary: The birds and the bees, Jack O'Neill, and Jonas Quinn.


**AUTHOR'S NOTES**: After the Season Six episode 'Metamorphosis' aired, I got to wondering about whether Jonas really did go on that date with Lt. Rush. And then, once 'Forsaken' aired with Jonas' 'never trust a girl who kisses on the first date' line, I wondered about the cultural differences between Earth and Kelowna. Someone had to explain such things to Jonas...guess who pulled the short straw?

**Earth Dating Is Easy**

Jack was about as uncomfortable as he could get.

But after Jonas' 'never trust a girl who kisses on the first date' comment and Carter's report that Jonas had a 'thing' for one of the infirmary lieutenants and was trying to work up the courage to ask her out, Jack found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to address the matter of human relationships on Earth in the United States of America.

Teal'c and Carter had cried off, claiming 'limited understanding of human courtship rituals' and 'wrong gender' respectively. Jack had tried to explain that it had been years since he'd been on the dating scene. Carter pointed out that as team leader it was his responsibility to oversee this small matter of their newest alien's understanding of Earth relationships.

It was a conspiracy bigger than the NID trying to frame him for the assassination - but a lot worse. At least he could claim he was innocent of Kinsey's murder - he could hardly use the same defence now.

So Jack found himself in Jonas' lab, staring at the fish and very much aware that he was being stared at in return by a somewhat surprised Jonas. Jack admitted he hadn't exactly been friendly to Jonas - partly because of the whole Daniel-thing, partly because he didn't want to go through 'jaded soldier meets enthusiastic explorer' all over again, which really should have been classed in with 'the whole Daniel-thing', but mostly because Jack was getting old and grumpy and couldn't really be bothered.

He was bothering now.

"Colonel, I'm sure you didn't come to my office to stare at the fish. Would you like a cup of tea?"

"Uh, no thanks," Jack gave a half smile, tapping his fingers restlessly on the desk. "I...Carter tells me you were flirting with one of the infirmary nurses." Might as well get down to it.

Jonas blinked. "Yeah. Lieutenant Rush. Um... Is that okay? I mean, since Teal'c said you and Sam can't..." The younger man caught Jack's suddenly ferocious gaze and backed off while Jack made silent inventory of all the slow and painful ways he could kill Teal'c - or at least humiliate him. "Well, Sam didn't seem to think there was a problem with my asking Tasha out, anyway."

This was a safer topic - and one with teasing potential. Daniel had always been excessively close-lipped about the women on-base who developed crushes on him. Probably because he knew that if Jack ever found out, he'd get the heck teased out of him, and Daniel hated being made fun of.

Jack left the fish to their own devices and came to lean on the opposite side of the desk. "So didja?"

"Did I ask her out?"

"Yes."

Jonas looked down at his work, exposing a stretch of neck that was going suspiciously red. "Uh, yes."

_Excellent_. "When's the first date?"

Jonas eyed him, expression cautious. "Do I need a chaperone or something? Nobody's mentioned anything like that, but some of the stricter families in Kelowna..." He stopped when Jack shook his head.

"No. It's okay." Jack gritted his teeth and hoped that the SF's outside weren't listening to the conversation and laughing their heads off. The security cameras were rolling of course, but they weren't allowed to have sound. "So, has anyone explained the rules of dating to you?"

"There are rules?"

"Well, not really..." Jack paused, considering the intricacies of human courting rituals. "You'll kinda learn as you go along."

"But you're going to explain the big ones to me now, right?"

"Uh...well..." He wasn't going to say that Carter and Teal'c had sent him on a mission - probably more for their own entertainment and his own humiliation than for Jonas' enlightenment - but... "I guess. Sort of. Carter was a bit...worried...by your statement about the girls kissing on the first date. Because...well, things are slightly different around here to what they probably are in Kelowna."

Jonas nodded. "I got that impression already."

"You did?"

"Yeah. Teal'c and I watch 'Sex in the City' when we're on base. It's very educational."

Jack looked the concept of 'Sex in the City'-as-sex-education full in the face. He paused. "Uh...well, I don't think that's quite what I had in mind." He searched around for the point he was trying to make. "Um...well, these days - I think - it's usually okay to kiss a girl on the first date. Or for the girl to kiss you on the first date. Or for you to kiss each other."

He really _was_ making a hash of this.

Carter would have been doubled over laughing if she'd been watching this. Daniel would have had a paper bag over his head, swearing in two dozen languages that he didn't know Jack. Teal'c would do the eyebrow thing and have that faint, smug, self-satisfied, _O'Neill-is-in-trouble-I-shall-laugh_ expression on his face.

Thank God they weren't watching this.

Jonas seemed oblivious to his embarrassment. "So kissing is okay? What else is okay on a date? Are there places I'm not supposed to touch?"

Oh, _God_, how to answer this one? Carter and Teal'c were in big trouble the next time he saw them.

He could skip out. Really. He could make an excuse and say, 'Sorry, Jonas, you're on your own here!' He could leave the room and not feel like he was forty-five and getting older as the youngest member of his team went on his first date with an Earth girl.

"It's okay, Colonel," Jonas said, looking back down at his work. "I understand that it's been a while..."

Oh, no. No _way_. Jack was _not_ going to be pitied for not having had a decent date in years - even if dating was old and _passe_ for him.

"Ask." The look he got from Jonas was slightly startled...and...triumphant? "Go on, ask." Jonas was from a planet where the women still got chaperoned around. A woman of noughties America would eat him for supper and spit out the bones - especially if the Lieutenant was the perky dark-blonde one from the infirmary. Jack suspected it was.

"Well, I guess things like holding hands and kissing is okay, but what about other things. Like stroking or touching her breasts?"

Okay, first question and Jack was already in _way_ too deep.

But he tried, he really did.

"Well...uh... It's probably a good idea to check with the girl about what she wants you to do. And you don't ever force a woman to do something she doesn't want to do." He wasn't sure what the deal was on Kelowna, but he added it anyway, just in case things were different there.

"Oh, I wouldn't do anything like that." Jonas said, shocked that Jack even had to mention it. "I just...you know when you think a girl might like you to do something but she doesn't actually want to tell you that she wants you to do it?"

Yup. Jack knew that feeling very well. He'd experienced it with just about every woman he'd ever met or known. Intuition was something that women possessed and men did not. And unfortunately for men, they rarely realised that what women wanted was someone to be intuitive about their needs instead of having to issue explicit orders.

"So touching her breasts probably won't be allowed?" Jonas asked, getting back to the first question he'd asked, apparently disappointed with the answer.

"Uhh..." Jack made a lightning fast decision. Team-mates or no, he was _not_ going to go there. "Probably not." Carter and Teal'c were dead. Very dead. He'd kill them with a _zat_ so their bodies could be disintegrated and he wouldn't have to hide anything. But in the meantime...

"Is it okay to stroke her thigh? She's got the sexiest legs!"

Killing Carter and Teal'c wasn't good enough, Jack decided, desperately looking for an exit out of the conversation. They would have to die slowly. Painfully. Exquisitely painfully.

"I think you'd better...um...check with her..." It was the closest thing to a coherent answer that Jack could give him. All he wanted was to get out of here with the last shreds of his dignity intact.

Jonas tore those last, frayed threads away. "Colonel?"

"Jonas?"

"Do Earth girls like being pleasured by mouth? I mean, is oral sex allowed in relationships...? Colonel?"

Jack's jaw nearly hit the desk in shock. The world around him faded in and out as his mind busily informed him that he couldn't possibly have heard what his ears were claiming they had. It just wasn't possible. _Nobody_ in the universe discussed this aspect of sex so casually. Nobody.

"Colonel?"

"Are you okay?"

No. He _wasn't_ okay.

"I'll call Major Carter..."

_Shit_. Not Carter. Carter should never be thought of in the same sentence as giving a woman oral s...

_Oh God..._

Yup. Jack was in trouble.

"I... That...That won't be necessary," Jack croaked, his mouth completely dry.

"Oh, good." Jonas peered at him, anxiously. "Are you okay?"

_No. Definitely not. Without a doubt, not okay._

"Fine," he managed. "Um..."

"So... Uh... I guess that you've never pleasured a woman by mouth?"

"For your inform..." Jack stopped, went red, glared at the earnestly curious expression, and looked away. "That's none of your business..."

He paused.

A little webcam sat on top of the computer monitor. Not unusual. Jonas had discovered the joys of the internet around the same time as he had discovered the weather channel.

What was unusual was that, instead of being pointed in the same direction of the screen, the webcam was pointed away from the user.

Towards Jack, in fact.

And wasn't the little black thing on the desk a microphone?

His eyes narrowed as he leaned over the desk. Jonas leaned back, suddenly looking nervous. "Colonel, is everything okay?"

He got an, _I'll deal with you in a minute, Jonas_, look. Patented Jack O'Neill.

Carter was dead.

She was _so_ dead.

He picked up the cellphone on Jonas' desk and keyed in Carter's cell number. After two rings it answered.

"Sir?"

"Have I mentioned how dead you are, Carter?"

"For what, sir?" Oh, she was a cool one. Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

"Oh, maybe for setting me up?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Colonel. I just answered my phone."

"But you knew it was me."

"Yes."

"Before I spoke."

"Colonel, I know your number."

"But I'm not on my cellphone. I'm on Jonas' cellphone. Which you can see quite well from the webcam you've been watching, right?"

There was a brief pause, then, "Oh."

For a smart cookie, sometimes Carter tended to crumble a little around the edges.

"Yes, _'Oh_.'" Jack said, mildly. "Payback's a bitch, Carter, and I'll be waiting to collect." He turned to the webcam on the computer and smiled. "You can count on that."

And he hung up.

He covered up the webcam with a sheet of paper, and gently pulled the microphone out of its socket while Jonas watched, apprehension written all over his face.

"I'm going to offer you a deal, Jonas," Jack said mildly. "You can help me get back at Carter and Teal'c, or I can make your life _very_ interesting."

"Interesting how?"

"Care to find out?"

It took Jonas a split second to come to a decision about his future - both his longevity and his place on SG-1. "Uhh... No."

"Good man." Jack smiled.

Jonas would pay in his own insignificant and most likely embarrassing way (maybe a light emetic in his food before he went on that first date), but Jack knew exactly who had masterminded this escapade. It had her fingerprints all over it.

And he already had plans on how to get his revenge.

The woman would never know what hit her.

----

Janet was doubled over with laughter as Sam grabbed her duffle and made for the door.

If she was lucky, she _might_ make it to the parking lot before the Colonel caught up with her.

"Did I not say that O'Neill would realise he was being 'set up'?" Teal'c asked with the air of satisfaction that Sam had long ago learned was his version of 'I told you so!'

She paused in the doorway, glaring at him. "Teal'c? Bite me!"

Up went the eyebrow. "Perhaps you should ask O'Neill to perform that service for you. He evidently has experience of such, although he chose not to divulge it to Jonas Quinn."

Janet went into a new set of paroxysms.

Sam fixed Teal'c with a glare that should have incinerated him, even as she went bright scarlet. Then she headed out the door without further ado.

- **fin** -


End file.
